Free The Riddle of Penncroft Farm by Dorothea Jensen Page B

That’s the cockade of my brother, Will!” It was Geordie, lounging on my bed, buckled shoes and all. “He wore it on his hat. The color showed he sided with Washington. Why, that cockade was Will’s only uniform for a good long while.”
    â€œWait a minute,” I protested. “What about his blue-and-tan uniform like George Washington’s?” I found my history book and opened it to a picture of Washington.
    Geordie sprang up from the bed. “Your ignorance is vastly amusing, Lars. Early in the war, hardly anybody had a real uniform—except for rich people like Washington. And those uniforms were all different colors, not just blue and buff. Some American uniforms were as red as the ones the British soldiers wore.” He looked at the history book picture and chuckled. “Nay, country boys like Will were lucky if they had a whole pair of ordinary breeches, let alone a whole uniform. Sometimes they’d make themselves leather hunting shirts to use for a sort of uniform. In truth, Washington liked to have them wear those shirts, because the British figured everybody in one was a genuine sharpshooter. Most of those American boys couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, but they surely did look the part!
    â€œWill was proud of this cockade,” Geordie went on, stooping over to pick it up. “Many didn’t even have these. Why, when the army marched through Philadelphia, General Washington ordered all the men to put green leaves in their hats so there’d be at least one thing uniform about the troops. ’Twas just before the battle at Brandywine Creek.”
    â€œBrandywine!” I crowed. “Great—I was just wishing old George there could talk and help me with this.” I waved the Brandywine study sheet at him. “Guess I’ve been studying too hard. I’m talking to pictures as well as ghos—that is, shades.”
    â€œIndeed,” Geordie remarked dryly. “I’ll tell you about that terrible day, but only if you stay mum. Badger me with questions and I’ll not go on. ’Tis a bargain?”
    â€œâ€™Tis,” I echoed, barely knowing what I’d bargained for.
    Â 
    That fall of 1777, after Will left home, was probably no stormier than any other, but I remember it as a blustery, tempestuous time. Doubtless my memory is clouded by my father’s fury and my mother’s despair over Will’s joining the patriot forces. As time passed, Father’s anger settled down into a sadness that changed him. Before, there had been songs and playful tricks to lighten the tedium of fruit picking. But that fall there was no Will taking away my ladder to strand me on a limb, and no Will’s whistle summoning me to cool off in the pond when Father was not
about. No, that fall there were but three of us filling our shoulder-hung buckets, our hearts aching as much as our arms
.
    One September evening, as Mother was making apple butter and I was stringing fruit for drying, Father came storming into the kitchen. “Another folly of those rebel hotheads,” he exclaimed bitterly. “And this one’s likely to ruin us!
”
    Quietly, Mother put down her paddle and swung the kettle out away from the coals. Then she moved across to Father. “Seat thyself, Laban, and try for a bit of composure,” she said softly
.
    â€œ
Composure? And what composure do they show, those madmen calling themselves the Continental Congress? A congress of traitors, I say. Madmen and traitors!
”
    I swallowed. “What did the Continental Congress do, Father?
”
    â€œ
That so-called Congress has officially decreed that apples can no longer be exported to England. Our half-picked crop—now worthless! We might as well feed it all to the pigs!
”
    â€œ
Nay, Laban, don’t take on so. Surely Geordie can sell the apples in Philadelphia or peddle them to the country inns.” Mother passed her hand over